[chaoscope] Re: Next Version?
- From: Nelson Webber <wnelweb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: chaoscope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:01:27 -0400
Excellent answer, I'd say.
Bugzilla is a really great tracking tool.
On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Chaoscope <chaoscope@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Key, hello all,
>
> No need to be nervous! I think you did well to write this post. I'm
> convinced a lot of users feel the same way as you do. Now let me answer your
> questions and please be assured that I'll do so as honestly (and nicely! :)
> as I can.
>
> - The mailing list has always been very quiet. I think most subscribers
> have joined to hear about development updates (since it's actually what the
> list is advertised to be) rather than anything else. The only time the
> activity increases is just before or after a release.
>
> - I wasn't able to work (as much as I'd have liked to) on Chaoscope in
> 2008.
> Implementing caching and multithreading was a major headache, so was the
> colour computation rewrite. I'm confident none of the features that remain
> to be implemented will cause as much trouble. If that's the case I'll move
> them to the 0.5 release. I want 0.4 to go public before the third quarter of
> 2009.
>
> - Beta testing *cannot* be done before all features are implemented. This
> is not just a statement I make, it's a golden rule of development! Any of
> the features listed in the "to do" list could break what's already been done
> thus making the beta testing completely pointless. Not only that but I
> haven't spent much time on optimisation yet and that'll come just before
> beta testing starts. Optimisation tends to break things a lot!
> Another idea would be to release the current code as a 0.3.5 version, an
> idea I've contemplated before. Unfortunately a public release involves the
> following:
>
> - Translation of the interface
> - Update the manual
> - Beta testing
> - Build and test the installation package
> - Translate the manual to French
> - Update the web site (gallery, etc.)
>
> This is not the kind of task I want to go through unless I'm confident the
> next release is very stable and worth being made public.
>
> Another reason not to make the current code a beta is I've seen supposedly
> beta testers boasting about getting their hands on the new version of
> Chaoscope in forums while not taking part in the beta testing at all.
> Therefore I want to be extra careful as to who I'll pick and make sure we'll
> have a proper bug tracking system (bugzilla?) in place before we start. This
> will take time too.
>
> - The multithreaded rendering only uses two cores because that was
> "relatively" easy to implement: one thread for the equation, one for the
> rendering. The nature of attractors (each iteration being dependent on the
> previous one) makes it hard to parallelise the calculation. Having said that
> there's the possibility of tracing two (or more) attractors in parallel and
> merge the result but I have yet to look into this in detail. Other parts of
> program will use all the available cores, namely the view updates (thanks to
> caching the quick render could replace the OpenGL preview!) and the batch
> rendering.
>
> I hope this answers all your questions!
>
> Regards,
>
> Nicolas Desprez
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>
--
SGWHTYT
Peace...
N.
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